Counting Christmas
by Lomonaaeren
Summary: HPDM slash. Draco is stunned to realize that Harry is oblivious of Christmas coming closer and closer, because that probably means that, horrors, he isn't getting lots of presents. COMPLETE.


**Title: **Counting Christmas

**Disclaimer: **J. K. Rowling and associates own these characters. I am writing this story for fun and not profit.

**Pairing: **Harry/Draco

**Warnings: **Established relationship, slight angst

**Rating: **PG-13

**Wordcount:** 3500

**Summary: **Draco is silently appalled that Harry doesn't realize it's near Christmas and has not bought lots of presents because _this probably means he isn't getting lots of presents. _He starts broadly hinting around about what he would like, but Harry is oblivious.

**Author's Notes: **This is another of my Advent fics, for alafaye, who let me choose the pairing and requested _Out shopping and realizing how close it is to the holidays while in a new relationship._ She is not responsible for the fluff that this turned into.

**Counting Christmas**

Draco hummed under his breath as he walked through Madam Malkin's, his arms loaded with purchases. Of course he could wait for Harry to buy them for him for Christmas, but he liked the thought of sparing Harry some work. This way, his tastes and sizes and the colors he liked wouldn't come as a surprise to Harry, and he was more likely to buy Draco things that Draco _wanted_.

He placed the collection of robes on the table in front of him and stepped back, admiring him. He heard a choked sound behind him, and turned around, ready to dismiss the tiresome people who thought that he had no right to be shopping in Diagon Alley thanks to that silly business about the Mark.

But the choker was Harry, who stared at the pile. Draco cocked his head, smiling winsomely. "Don't worry," he said. "There are lots of other things that I want. You'll still have plenty to buy for me."

Harry frowned at him. "Why would I want to buy that much for you? It's months away from your birthday."

Draco sighed delicately. Harry didn't keep the best track of holidays, sometimes. It had been an effort for him to remember that Draco's birthday was the fifth of June. "Yes, and in the _wrong direction, _Harry. Given that it's December."

"Like I said." Harry folded his arms and gave Draco a frowning scrutiny, which Draco returned. That made Harry's eyes glint and spark, and Draco smiled back. That usually led to _interesting _times in the bedroom when they returned home. "Why would I be buying you anything?"

Draco rolled his eyes. And then there were the times that Harry was willfully oblivious. "Because it's near Christmas, of course. I really did appreciate the gifts that you got for my birthday—" they had been few, but properly expensive, given that he and Harry had only been exchanging cautious letters and not dating at the time "—but I would like some more things for Christmas. You could start with clothes." He no longer liked many of the clothes that his parents forced him to wear when Draco was around them. They were too formal, too itchy, too comfortless. And too dark or pale, most of the time. Draco wanted bright colors and life, not the poised frost that his parents favored in the Manor.

Harry blinked, slowly. Then he said, "It's Christmas?"

Draco laughed, but stopped when he saw the glare Harry turned on him. He shook his head, confused. He had only stated the obvious. Harry usually reserved that look for when Draco had seriously overstepped some boundary. "Of _course _it's Christmas," he said. "It's the second of December. Christmas is the twenty-fifth. Why wouldn't it be near Christmas?"

"You don't need to repeat it so often." But Harry's frown had vanished. "If it's only the second, then we aren't near it after all."

Draco could only stare, appalled. Then he laughed again, and this time it sounded false even to his ears. And Harry had just cocked his head to watch him, instead of responding the way he should.

"Harry," Draco said as gently as he could, "that means you only have twenty-two days to buy me presents. Only twenty-one, really, since so many shops close for Christmas Eve. Twenty-one days isn't a lot of time."

"Yes, it is," said Harry, and gave him that smile Draco ordinarily found devastating—and did now, but for _much _different reasons. "After all, I bought the gifts that I got you for your birthday in three days." He turned away, ignoring the gasp that Draco could feel taking over his own face. "Come on. You need to pay for those things so we can get out of here."

Draco paid for the clothes, but kept one eye on Harry's back, waiting for him to start shaking with laughter, the way he would if this was a joke. But Harry kept his back turned, and picked up a newspaper that someone had left behind, flipping it through it to get to the Quidditch page.

"Sir? Sir!"

Madam Malkin was trying to get his attention to tell him the price. Draco swallowed, having to work his throat so it could get properly moistened, and turned back around. Madam Malkin watched him with an understanding eye as he spilled the Galleons on the counter.

"Hard day?" she murmured.

"You have _no idea_," Draco said, and handed over the requisite number of Galleons, gaze still on Harry. Harry felt it, as he tended to do, and turned around, his smile bland. Draco shook his head and accepted the shrunken package of his purchases from Madam Malkin, hurrying out of the shop. His mind was occupied more with what Harry had revealed to him than the cobbles, wet from a recent rain, and Harry had to put a hand on his shoulder twice to keep him from slipping. But all his talk was of the Weasleys and some news about a Quidditch victory he had just read in the paper, not Christmas.

_If he doesn't count the days until Christmas, _Draco decided, fastening his gaze on the back of Harry's neck, _then I'll just have to do it for him._

* * *

"What is this, Draco?"

Harry sounded as though he was picking up a dead rat between his fingers, not the calendar that Draco had thoughtfully bought him. Draco turned around and smiled at him, noting as he did so that the calendar, tiny vellum pages on a thick back, was working exactly as advertised. One small voice recited the current date, the fourth of December, and other little voices chattered the number of days left until Christmas as the pages slipped through Harry's fingers.

"An early holiday gift," Draco said, and stepped around the kitchen table to kiss Harry on the cheek. "I hope that you're not upset I'm showing my thoughtfulness?"

Harry shut his mouth and gazed at Draco in a baffled kind of way. Draco let a smile lurk in his eyes. Harry was always pushing him to be more thoughtful to the Weasleys and Granger and random victims Harry brought home to recuperate and just about anyone else. He could hardly object if Draco started with _him._

"Right," Harry said cautiously at last. "But I did—Draco, you didn't need to get me this. That was what you were ordering by owl post yesterday, wasn't it?"

"Yes," Draco said, seeing no need to lie. It had taken a day for the order to arrive, or he would have had it here yesterday, on the third, with even more time for Harry to go to the shops.

Harry still frowned, but he took his seat and stared at the date again. The small picture there, a witch with dark hair and white streaks in it, rearranged her curls and spoke the current date again. Draco's fingers twitched. He hadn't realized just how advanced the magic of the calendar was. He was tempted to take it himself, but he refrained, reminding himself that this way, Harry would feel all the greater need to buy something nice for him, since Draco had started the gift-giving at a certain level.

"If you want to give it to me," Harry murmured at last, his eyes softened, "of course I'll take it." He stood up and leaned in to kiss Draco on the mouth. "Even if you did it for no reason, just as a random present."

He turned away and gathered up the Floo powder. "I have to go, late for work already. And they've set up these ridiculous decorations wandering around the Atrium that I always trip over if I don't Floo in in just the right time." He winked at Draco and disappeared into the fireplace.

Draco waited until the Floo had shut before he thunked his head into the table. The calendar fell over, and the little voices chattered briefly as they flipped. "Eightee—" "Fourtee—" "Five—"

They were silent by the time Draco sat up again, rubbed his forehead, and went to fetch a Headache Draught. He would have to take more proactive measures, that was all.

* * *

"That's—different."

Harry said the words in a strained voice, his eyes darting between Draco and the clock he'd hung on the wall. Draco stood back with his arms folded and his smile small and smug. The calendar had been too subtle, but not even a _Gryffindor _who had thought he could defeat the greatest Dark Lord in decades before he actually did it could ignore _this _one.

The clock was made of black wood, the most impressive one that the shop Draco had visited in Knockturn Alley had been able to put together. The body shimmered with light and color as the fire played off it, and then the flames would turn and the colors were drowned in the black wood again. The pendulum swayed gently back and forth, made of silver, and the hands that went around the great face, over the golden Roman numerals, were made of mahogany. Draco had carefully planned to have the clock run a few minutes slow, so that it would strike the hour of six just after Harry got home.

Harry shook his head, gave Draco one more bemused grin, and turned towards the stairs. "I have to get dressed," he shouted over his shoulder.

"Why?" Draco asked. "You haven't even stayed to hear it strike the hour yet!"

Harry turned around on the stairs, hands braced on the banisters, and Draco pouted at him, widening his eyes. His pout unmanned Harry more effectively than most curses, he knew.

Harry smiled at him a little and stopped shifting from foot to foot like a child who had to go use the loo. "All right, I suppose we can keep your parents waiting a while longer."

Draco barely kept his face from showing his shock. He had forgotten that they were going to his parents' house tonight for dinner. Actually _forgotten._ He opened his mouth to ask if Harry was going to give him his presents at the Manor—

And the clock began to strike. Except instead of a chime or cuckoos or small mechanical figures coming out to hit each other over the head with hammers, the words came out as, "Christmas! Christmas! Christmas! It's the happiest time of the year!"

There was a pause, and then a smaller voice added, in a cheerful tone that Draco was especially proud of since you would never have thought that it would come out of a clock like this, "With _presents!_"

Then the hour was past, and the clock's pendulum went back to swaying. Draco turned to Harry, bracing himself in case Harry should come running down the stairs and hug the breath out of him, all the while telling him how wrong he had been and that he now understood that gifts were important to Draco.

But instead, Harry stood there, smiling a little, shaking his head, and clapping his hands. Then he said, "Very pretty. Now let's go, before your mother scolds me for keeping you late again. She always seems to think that _I'm _the one who requires an hour to arrange my hair," and turned and leaped lightly up the stairs two at a time.

Draco followed him forlornly. Now only had the attempts to remind Harry about Christmas distracted Draco from the intended evening at the Manor completely, but he had spent a lot of money on that clock, and he was thinking now that he should have kept it to buy the presents he wanted for himself.

_Since there's no way that Harry will buy them for me._

* * *

Draco raised his hand and signaled Pansy to crouch down under the windowsill on the outside. This particular plan would be ruined if Harry saw her too soon.

Harry was strolling out of the kitchen and towards the drawing room, where he usually spent most of the day on weekends when he didn't have an Auror case to attend to. He had his head buried in the newspaper, and Draco relaxed a little. That meant he was unlikely to notice Pansy until it was the right time.

Harry settled into his chair and propped his feet up in front of him, chuckling over something the Minister had done that was printed on the front page of the _Prophet. _Draco had caught a glimpse of the article earlier, and he usually would have read over it in more detail so they could laugh about it together, but right now he was too desperate.

He flashed his wand down in a little arc, leaving a trail of pink sparks behind it. _Now. _Then he strolled into the drawing room to join Harry.

"Lovely morning, isn't it?" he asked, bending down to kiss Harry's forehead. "A little frosty, but I suppose that's usual for the _fourteenth _of _December_."

"Is it?" Harry looked up with a faint smile on his face. "I confess that it's not a date that tends to stick in my memory."

Draco clenched his teeth down, and had a response on the tip of his tongue when Pansy burst through the front door. "Goodness, what's that?" Draco cried, with a tone of panic in his voice that was _precisely _calculated, if he did say so himself. One of his finest bits of acting.

"Happy Christmas, Draco!" Pansy had time to shout, staggering into the drawing room, blinded by the huge pile of brightly-wrapped boxes she was carrying.

She only had time to shout that much, because Harry's Stunner, automatically flying from his wand, hit her in the legs, beneath the boxes, and she collapsed to the carpet. Draco yelped and cast a spell that would catch the presents before they could hit the floor along with Pansy. Some of them were _fragile._

Harry stared back and forth between him and Pansy, and then shook his head. "Didn't you tell her about what happened to Nott?"

"That's different," Draco said, and he also considered that he had _mastered _the precise air of injured dignity that was appropriate to the situation. Not that it mattered to Harry, who continued to study him with narrowed eyes. "He tried to fancy himself your rival for my affections and sneaked into the house with a knife. He _deserved _your Auror reflexes. What did Pansy ever do to you?"

Ignoring Harry's ridiculous mutter about "wanted to hand me over to Voldemort," Draco bent down tenderly beside his fair friend, and cast the spell that would revive her. Pansy blinked, and Draco healed the bruise forming on her forehead where it had collided with the nearest box.

"Did it work?" she whispered to him, behind cover of the largest gift, which Draco devoutly hoped was a jumper better than the silly silver one she had got him last year.

Draco glanced up, heart hammering—

And saw Harry strolling out of the room, waving his hand behind him as he called, "I'll leave you Slytherins to your party!"

Draco buried his head in his hands. "No," he moaned.

Pansy allowed him a minute of mourning before tugging at his sleeve. "Help me separate the empty boxes from the ones that have something in them," she told him. "I should be getting home if I'm going to wrap Mother's presents in time."

Draco stared at her in horror. "You brought some _empty _ones?"

* * *

Draco sat up in his bedroom, staring sadly at his hands. He had tried subtler tactics than ever in the last few days: pouting when Harry came into a room, sighing sadly when Harry said the word "presents," even when it was really "presence," or when he was talking about the present moment, and spending every spare moment that he could get away with posing artistically in front of the calendar or clock. But now it was almost Christmas Eve, and Harry still had shown no sign of noticing that he needed to buy gifts.

Draco closed his eyes and shook his head slowly. Harry had been so attentive and charming over his birthday, and had even hinted in his letters about what Draco would receive before he received it. (Cryptically enough that the gifts had still come as a surprise, of course. It would have ruined the fun if Draco had been able to guess).

And Harry's friends had kept remarking, loudly, where Draco could hear, that Christmas was Harry's favorite holiday. They seemed convinced that Draco wouldn't treat _Harry _right, would make light of Christmas or not buy him things that were expensive enough. Draco had been able to reassure them of that. He would never think lightly of any day that could bring him something shiny and new.

But this year, even though he knew he would get gifts from Blaise and Theo and Greg and their families and his parents and probably even Granger, who was that kind of thoughtful…

It made him feel as bleak as a hearth without a fire to think that he wouldn't get any from Harry.

Draco slowly sank back until his head was resting on his pillow, and remained there for the rest of his evening. When Harry knocked on his bedroom door and inquired after his health, he pretended that he didn't hear.

* * *

"Happy Christmas, Draco!"

Draco mumbled something in response as he stumbled towards the kitchen. He'd had a bit of a lie-in, since his mum didn't expect them at the Manor until ten, and now he needed a cup of tea.

But there was something wrong with the light in the kitchen. Draco blinked and held his hand up to half-shield his eyes, wondering if Harry had tried to light a _Lumos _Charm and failed. Draco had always told him that running around using that phoenix feather and holly wand when he could have used the Elder Wand was a silly thing to do.

Draco drew his own wand and cast the Dimming Charm that he had used so many times when he was young and a beam of enchanted light was waking him up on a Saturday before he wanted to wake up. In seconds, the corona of glittering brightness around something on the table had shrunk until Draco could see it clearly.

It was a mound, a pile, a _heap _of presents, all of them wrapped in the bright green paper and silver ribbons that Draco preferred.

He spun around and stared at Harry, who was standing in the entrance to the drawing room with a mug of coffee in one hand. His eyes were so gentle that Draco had to forgive him, and he knew he didn't look his best when he haughtily tried to pull himself up and ask for an explanation.

"How did you—why did you—"

"I knew that I couldn't surprise you this time, like I did for your birthday, unless I did all my shopping _early_." Harry's grin was wide enough to swallow most of the pile on the table. Draco instinctively shifted a little backwards, to protect it. "So I already had your gifts bought when you started hinting about it, and that was why I never gave in to the pressure to buy anything else." He folded his arms and gave Draco a little _look_. "Plus, if you had the money to spend on that clock, I reckoned you could afford anything you wanted that I missed."

Draco was torn between wanting to say that that was not the point of _presents_, and what he did say, which was, "But why did you act so ignorant that Christmas was even _coming_?"

Harry's smile flashed out, smaller this time but warmer, the one of his smiles that Draco liked the most. "Because, I'll admit, sometimes I just like fucking with you."

Draco stepped forwards. He was filled with burning, buzzing, furious desires. One was to avenge the way Harry had messed with him. One was to spin around and start ripping open his presents now, instead of taking them with him to the Manor the way that his mother would think was proper.

And one was the one he gave in to, which was to seize Harry's jaw and neck and kiss him as hard as he could.

Harry bent eagerly down to lend himself to the kiss, and Draco got an arm around his neck and dragged him still further into it. Already his mind was working away on the forgiveness.

And another thought. _If Harry will buy me this much so early, maybe I can persuade him to do something for our anniversary next July…_

**The End.**


End file.
